Walking and chewing gum in Washington

Just as a March snowstorm slammed into the East Coast, a temporary thaw fell over the four-year Cold War between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders. With any hope, conversations between the two sides will start a process that leads to sensible deals on universal background checks, immigration reform and long-term debt.

The most challenging of the three items is tackling long-term debt in a way that will take on comprehensive entitlement reform, allow for investments that spur economic growth and ends the generational theft that victimizes younger Americans. Forget all the talk about stealing from our kids and grandkids. Washington is now dooming workers in their twenties and thirties to a future of unsustainable tax rates and a depressed economy brought on by massive federal debt.

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Yes, I believe that the president and Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. Tackling entitlement reform now allows the president to promise Americans born before 1960 that their Medicare and Social Security benefits will be unchanged. Reforms can be phased in for those born after. Tax reform and a Pentagon overhaul should also be part of any grand deal.

Getting serious about debt will give Washington breathing room on short-term deficits. That does not excuse the kind of crude Keynesian reductionism that President Obama’s former economic team practiced — preaching that even wasteful Washington spending was desirable. The CBO’s report on Mr. Obama’s woeful stimulus bill proves that low-quality investments keep people out of work while limiting future spending options.

As Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs said earlier this week, “When the stimulus was done and the Congressional Budget Office ran it through their model, they over predicted the benefits that would come. You can’t just throw money at jobs and transfer payments. That’s a little too simple.”

In the end, the stimulus was such a wasted opportunity because so much of it was wasted. We’ve got to invest more wisely moving forward.

While on the subject of being smart with our money and getting people back to work, President Obama and Democrats must be more mindful of the negative drag higher taxes have on a weakened economy. While liberals love arguing that spending cuts have doomed European-styled austerity, they always forget to mention that most austerity packages across Europe were packed with tax increases. It is not enough to warn against sudden, sharp spending cuts. Keynesians should also start focusing a little more on the damaging short-term effects of tax hikes.

Democrats can’t have it both ways. Raising taxes in the short term will be just as damaging to our struggling economy as fixating on massive spending cuts over the next year. Our leaders need to focus on short-term growth and long-term debt. When the seas calm a bit, Democrats can go back to fighting for higher taxes and Republicans can battle over how to balance the budget. But for now, let’s all work together to get America back to work.

A guest columnist for POLITICO, Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.